


Fighting Ghosts

by muse_of_mbaku



Category: Chicago PD (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 17:55:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29211474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muse_of_mbaku/pseuds/muse_of_mbaku
Summary: A quick few hundred words building on the episode Black and Blue (Season 6, Episode 8)





	Fighting Ghosts

Kevin was seeing a ghost. Or maybe an evil spirit. One that wouldn’t let him rest. Last week, from the corner of his eye, he swore he saw her. It had been only a glimpse. A float of hair in the wind and a sidelong view of her profile was almost enough to convince him. Then there had been the rasp of her voice in a bar before the reason he was there had drawn his attention once more. Whatever, or whoever, it was wouldn’t leave him alone.

Midnight had long since come and gone by the time Kevin pulled onto his block. The houses were dark save the blaze of the occasional porchlight or the blue glow of a television in a living room window. It seemed he hadn’t seen the neighborhood in the daylight in weeks and from the looks of the case board back at the district it would probably be the same for the foreseeable future. Kevin waited for the distinctive double flash of his headlights after he locked his car before rounding the back of it and making a weary path towards his front door.

“You’re hardly ever home.”

A ghost indeed. He hadn’t seen her since that afternoon outside the bar three years ago. Her attorneys had worked a deal, but there’d been no way she was going to walk away no matter how much she’d been manipulated into being an accessory to murder. Still, three years later and the flash of their singular night together still managed to creep into his quiet times. But so had her words. Her jabs about his blackness, his loyalty, his character. Kevin stopped short, his hands clenching and unclenching inside his jacket pockets. He took a quick glance to the left and right and then over his shoulder.

“Nobody coming to get you. I’m alone.”

He pushed up his eyebrows in acknowledgment before starting forward again. He paused a few feet from Laila sitting on the steps leading to his home.

“You look good, Kev.”

Kevin sucked his teeth. “Not like a sellout?”

She smiled briefly before shaking the waves of hair floating around her shoulders.

“You look like a good man, Officer Atwater. I came to apologize.”

Kevin braced his arms across his chest and tilted his head to study her. She seemed sincere from what he could tell, but three years could change anyone.

“You said what you felt. Got it off your chest. Stand in it.”

Laila rose, taking a moment to work the kinks in her legs it seemed and took three slow steps down to Kevin’s level. This time it was her that stopped just short enough to look up at him.

“I felt it then. I don’t now and I want to make amends. Can you let me do that?”

Kevin shrugged.

“I was just barely holding on. I’d worked damn hard to change my life and do some good in this city and the minute I let my guard down for a cop look what happened.”

“That had nothing to do with me. I did my job. You think went looking for something to hem you up?”

Kevin ached to tell her how he’d stood in the darkness with the weight of a gun in his hand making the decision to save another life instead of sacrificing it. He couldn’t, though. Some things he’d have to carry alone.

“I don’t. I know that more than ever now.”

“And what changed?”

“Word travels. I heard how you made sure you that white cop’s death didn’t get pinned on those brothers. Heard what they did to you, too.”

Kevin bristled. There was an anger and an ache each time he remembered how his body had been broken and his spirit tested. How he’d felt utterly alone and shouting into a void about what was right while he knew it he was like he wasn’t saying anything to those who had the power to change things. How he’d had to play some version of their game in order to save himself.

“Streets talk, Kev. I’m proud of you. I know it’s hard to be on the inside and the out. You’re carrying the weight the best you can. I shouldn’t have added to that.”

Kevin nodded shallowly. He’d take it. It was more than he got from the ones who wore the same badge as him and some of those he called family. No matter what Laila said, what others whispered as they patted him on the back, or the averted eyes of those who’d come from everything he was, Kevin still felt like a man without a country and he wasn’t quite sure he was willing to sacrifice anything more to change that.

“Thanks for the apology. Took heart to show up here.”

“I needed to. Doesn’t make things right, but it’s something. I’ll go on ahead and get outta your way.”

“I’ll see you around?”

“You’ll be seeing me. I think we’re on the same page now.”

Kevin watched her float down the block, possibilities and regrets trailing her like spirits.


End file.
